Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (51 page)

The end foreseen by Leina arrived after another three weeks. During that time neither radio nor spectroscreen networks made mention of recent interplanetary animosities, while their other offerings revealed no sinister trend in any direction. Mutants had again been featured in various items of entertainment but the everlasting roles of hero, heroine and villain had been distributed with fine impartiality.

Elsewhere twelve long black ships of space had nosed a quarter turn to starboard and now were approaching the eight unoccupied planets of a minor binary system. Temporarily, at least, the drive toward Vega was arrested.

The morning sun shone down, bright and warm. The sky was a clear blue bowl marred only by a streak of low cloud on the eastward horizon and a great curving vapor-trail rising into the stratosphere. Once more the
Fantôme was
Venus-bound.

A four-seater copter gave first indication that errors must be paid for, that the past has an unpleasant way of catching up with the present. It droned out of the west, landed near the crater already beginning to produce a crop of colorful weeds. One man got out.

Leina admitted him to the house. A young, well-built type with frank, eager features, he was a very junior operative of Terran Intelligence, a sub-telepath able to probe minds but without a shield for his own. From the viewpoint of those who had sent him this made him an excellent choice for his special mission. Essentially he was open and disarming, the sort to establish confidence.

“My name is Grant,” he introduced himself. Conditioned by his own status, he spoke vocally, knowing that mental communication placed him under a handicap when dealing with a true telepath. “I have come to tell you that Major Lomax of Terran Intelligence would like to see you as soon as may be convenient.”

“Is it urgent?” Raven asked.

“I think so, sir. He instructed me to bring you and this lady in the copter if you were ready to leave at once.”

“Oh, so he wants
both
of us?”

“Yes, he asked for you and the lady.”

“Do you know what it is about?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.” Grant’s expression was candid and his unprotected mind confirmed his words.

Raven gave Leina an inquiring glance. “Might as well get it over now. What do you say?”

“I am ready.” Her voice was low, her eyes brilliant as she studied the visitor.

His face flushing, Grant fidgeted and prayed for some means of closing his mind which insisted on thinking, “She is looking into me, right inside of me, right at where I’m hiding inside of myself. I wish she couldn’t do that. Or I wish I could look at her in the same way. She is big and cumbersome—but very beautiful.”

Leina smiled but tactfully made no remark, said instead, “I’ll get my coat and handbag, David. Then we can go.”

When she reappeared they went to the waiting machine which rose smoothly under whirling vanes and drifted westward. Nobody said anything more during the hour’s flight. Grant kept strictly to business, handled the controls, maintained his thoughts in polite and disciplined channels.

Leina studied the bright landscape turning below, giving it the undivided attention of one who is seeing it for the first time—or the last. Raven closed his eyes and attuned himself to calls far above the normal telepathic band.

“David! David!”

“Yes, Charles?”

“They are taking us away.”

“We, too, Charles.”

The copter lost altitude, floated down toward a stark and lonely building standing upon a windswept moor. A squat, heavily built edifice, it resembled an abandoned power station or perhaps a onetime explosives dump.

Touching earth, the machine jounced a couple of times, settled itself. Grant got out, self-consciously helped Leina down. With the others following he went to the armor plate front door, pressed a button set in thick concrete at its side. A tiny trap in the armor plate opened like an iris diaphragm, revealed a scanner peering at them.

Apparently satisfied the trap closed over the eye. From behind the door came a faint, smooth whirr of machinery as huge bolts were drawn aside.

“Like a fortress, this place,” remarked Grant, innocently conversational.

The door swung ajar. The summoned pair stepped through and left the other to return to his copter.

Turning on the threshold, Raven said to Grant, “It reminds me of a crematorium.”

Then the armor plate cut him off from view and the bolts slid back into place. Grant stood a moment staring at the door, the concrete, the great windowless walls. He shivered.

“It does at that! What a lousy thought!”

Moodily he took the copter up, noticing that somehow the sun had lost much of its warmth.

Behind the door stretched a long passage down which a distant voice came reverberating. “Please continue straight ahead. You will find me in the room at the end. I regret not being there to meet you but know you will forgive me.”

It was real enough, that voice, suave, courteous, but curiously impersonal and devoid of warmth. And when they found the speaker his looks matched his tones.

Seated in a chair behind a long, low desk, Major Lomax proved to be a lean individual in his early thirties. He had light blue eyes that gazed fixedly and rarely blinked. His fair hair was cropped to a short bristle. The most noteworthy feature was his extreme pallor; his face was white, almost waxy and had a permanent tautness on one side.

Motioning to a double pneumaseat, the only other resting place in the room, Lomax said, “Kindly sit there. I thank you for coming so promptly.” The blue eyes went from Raven to Leina and back again. “I apologize for not escorting you from the door. I am rather handicapped. It is difficult for me to stand, much less walk.”

“I am very sorry,” said Leina with womanly sympathy.

There was no easy way of detecting the reaction. A swift probe showed that Lomax was a top-grade telepath with an exceptionally efficient shield. His mind was closed as securely as could be done by any human being. Despite that they might have driven through this defense with a simultaneous and irresistible thrust. By mutual consent they refrained from trying. The other must have sensed their first tentative pass at him, but no sign of it showed on his pale, strained countenance.

Positioning a thin wad of typewritten papers in front of him, Lomax continued in the same cool, unemotional voice as before.

“I don’t know whether you now suspect the purpose of this interview, neither can I tell what action on your part may be precipitated by it, but before we begin I want you to know that my function is prescribed here.” He tapped the papers. “It has been worked out for me in complete detail and all I must do is follow it through as written."

“You make it sound ominous,” offered Raven. “Oh, well, carry on.”

There was no visible reaction to that either. The sheet-white face remained as fixed and expressionless as that of a mummy. It suggested that its owner could and would play to perfection the part of an intellectual automaton.

Picking up the top sheet, Lomax read from it. “First, I have to give you a personal message from Mr. Carson, head of Terran Intelligence, to the effect that when informed of this interview he strongly disapproved, opposed it by all legitimate means at his command, but was overruled. He wishes me to convey his sincere regards and assure you that no matter what may take place within this building he will always hold both of you in the greatest esteem.”

“Dear me!” said Raven. “This is getting worse.”

Lomax let it go by with complete impassivity. “This interview will be conducted only on a vocal basis. There is a reason, for it is being recorded for the benefit of those who arranged it.”

Putting the top sheet aside, he took the next one and continued in the same robotlike way. “It is essential that you know I have been chosen for my present task because of a rare combination of qualifications. I am a member of Terran Intelligence and a telepath well able to cover his own mind. Last but by no means least, I am very much of a physical wreck.”

Glancing up, he met Leina’s great optics and for the first time displayed a faint shadow of expression in the form of vague and swiftly suppressed uneasiness. Like Grant and many others, he was disturbed when looked into so deeply.

He hurried on. “I shall not bore you with full details. In brief, I was involved in a crash and badly injured. Everyone did their best for me but my remaining days are not many, the waiting time is increasingly painful and I shall be glad to go.”

The blue eyes lifted, stared straight at them with bold and unmistakable defiance. “I want you to keep that in mind because it is most important: I am in the abnormal mental state of a man who will be glad to die. Therefore I cannot be intimidated by the threat of death.”

“Neither can we,” assured Raven, amiably bland.

It disconcerted Lomax a little. He had expected nothing less than a heated and indignant demand as to who was threatening his life. Concealing his surprise, he returned his attention to the papers.

“Further, although I do not fear my own dissolution, I shall be compelled to react should my existence be endangered. I have undergone a special course of mental conditioning which has created a purely reactive circuit within my mind. It is not part of my normal thinking processes, cannot be detected or controlled by any other mind-probe. This circuit automatically keys-in the instant I am in peril of losing either my life or control of my free personality. It will force me to do something
unthinkingly,
instinctively, the result of which will be the immediate destruction of all three of us.”

Raven frowned and commented, “Somewhere back of all this is a badly frightened man.”

Ignoring that, Lomax went determinedly on. “What I shall do is not known to me nor will be until the very moment I do it. Therefore you have nothing to gain by combining to beat down my mental shield and search my mind for what is not consciously there. You have nothing to gain by trying to hypnotize me or seize control of me by any other supernormal means. On the contrary, you have everything to lose—your lives!”

The pair on the pneumaseat glanced at each other, did their best to look outwitted and aghast. Lomax had a precisely defined part to play—but so had they.

It was a curious situation without parallel in human annals, for each side was in mental hiding from the other, each was holding a trump card in the form of power over life and death, each
knew
that victory for itself was certain. And each in his own way was right!

Looking at Lomax who refused to meet her eyes, Leina complained with some exasperation, “We came here in good faith thinking perhaps our help was needed. We find ourselves being treated like uncommon criminals guilty of heaven alone knows what. No charge has been made against us and we are denied the proper processes of the law. Just what are we supposed to have done to deserve all this?”

“Exceptional methods must be applied to exceptional cases,” remarked Lomax, quite unmoved. “It is not so much what you have done as what you may do eventually.”

“Can’t you be more explicit?”

“Please be patient. I am coming to it right now.” He resumed his sheets. “This is a condensation of facts sufficient to enable you to understand the reason for this meeting. Certain matters brought to the attention of the World Council—”

“By a schemer named Thorstern?” suggested Raven, picturing Emmanuel’s scowl when this came over the recording system.

“... caused them to order a thorough inquiry into the nature of your activities, especially during your recent operations on behalf of Terran Intelligence,” continued Lomax, stubbornly. “Which inquiry was later extended to this lady with whom you—reside.”

“You make it sound nasty,” reproved Leina.

“Data was drawn from a large number of sources considered reliable and the resulting report, which was complete and exhaustive, made President Heraty decide to appoint a special commission to study it and issue a recommendation.”

“Somebody must think we’re important.” Raven slid a glance at Leina who responded with an I-told-you-so look.

“Composed of two World Council members and ten scientists, this commission held that on the basis of the evidence before them you had displayed supernormal powers of eight distinct classifications, six known and two previously unknown. Or, alternatively, that in addition to the telepathic power which you have never tried to conceal you also possess hypnotic power of such redoubtable strength that you have succeeded in compelling witnesses to attribute other aptitudes you don’t really have. Either the witnesses are dependable or they have been deluded by you. Either way the result is the same: the evidence suggests that you are a multi-talented mutant.” He did a double-take at the paper, murmured with a touch of annoyance, “That’s obviously wrong,” and changed it to, “You are
both 
multi-talented mutants.”

“Is that an offense?” inquired Raven, not bothering to contradict.

“I have no personal views regarding this matter.” Lomax leaned forward, held his middle a moment while his face went even whiter. Then he recovered, said, “Kindly permit me to continue. If the evidence had favored no more than that, the World Council would have been compelled to accept that multi-talented mutants do exist in spite of so-called natural laws. But the data is equally in support of an alternative theory toward which some members of the commission lean while others reject it as fantastic.”

The listening pair stirred on the pneumaseat, showed curiosity and mild interest. No more than that. No apprehension. No fear of being rooted out like surreptitious scuttlers in the dark. At every moment they were living the part they wished to play, as determined as Lomax to see it through to the bitter end.

“You are entitled to know the cogent items,” Lomax carried on. He discarded another sheet. “A careful re-examination of your antecedents shows that both of you might well be persons considerably out of the ordinary by our standards of today. It was by substantially the same method that Mr. Carson traced you in the first place and reached the same conclusion.”